Liber

The Dell Insp. 17" SE with 3D is way under rated. One reason is, they put a 32B msata in to cache to, and installed OS to a 5400rpm drive, which cut out the legs right there. the throttling of the Gpu didn't help, but there is a modded bios you can find on this forum to fix this issue. If you want bad boy laptop out of the box, this is NOT for you. You get a great deal (under 1100USD) on a 3D laptop, but you really have to mold this laptop with the money you saved to bring this animal to life. And what follows is all my research I have done to help you see all the points that can be improved upon cheaply, leaving you with a laptop you will be proud to show off to your friends. You can find this refurbed from Dell. You MUST call when you order to make sure you are getting the one with a 3D screen, the website is not clear on this point. I cost 1069. You have to buy glasses, but it is still better than full price. I noticed here that there is a bios mod to help the massive throttling problem, once this is applied, this laptop is the best thing you will find for a 3D laptop for the money. If you have 200 bucks you can put into it, you should replace the msata drive to 256GB(that I know will work, higher GB msata drivers may work). You can load the OS to the msata drive, but it takes a few steps. Not only will this increase the read write massively, it will help with the key problem this laptop has, over heating. msata generates less heat than a spinning drive, so it helps to cool. here are the links I covered here. Dell Factory Outlet how to boot from msata Inspiron (7720) Boot from mSATA Instructions - Laptop General Hardware Forum - Laptop - Dell Community Fastest best price msata drive I know of: Amazon.com: Mushkin Direct Atlas Deluxe 240GB mSATA SATA III Solid State Drive MKNSSDAT240GB-DX: Computers & Accessories If you invest in a wireless card, you can use this with a 3D TV to play your games on a bigger screen than 17 inches or use hdmi 1.4a (limited to 720 3D at 120hz). This laptop was made for those who want a great laptop for low dollars and likes upgrading laptops. If you want to overclock the GPU, use this to lower the temp by about 5 degrees F. Amazon.com: Prolimatech PK-1 Nano Aluminum Thermal Compound - 5 Gram: Computers & Accessories This is one of the best thermal pastes out today. Do yourself a favor, get a cooling pad. for this bad boy, I have been a believer in cooling pads since my vostro 1500. I would suggest this one mostly due to the fan location on the bottom of the laptop. You want a pad with a fan near the fan on the laptop to push air in, so it can pull more. Amazon.com: CM Storm SF-19 Gaming Laptop Cooling Pad with Two 140mm Turbine Fans (SGA-4000-KKNF1): Electronics I did lots of research before buying this laptop. I'm trying to put together everything I can think of to help anyone wanting the cheapest badboy 3D laptop you can buy today. You can buy the suggested upgrades I listed here later after recovering from dropping a grand on the laptop. With glasses, 256 GB msata drive, chilling pad, and thermal paste; you will still be under what you would pay for a qosmio or Alienware, or MSI laptop by 100s of dollars. Hope this helps, and if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer any questions or if anyone has cheaper prices they know of. Please feel free. I use to work for creative labs as the top guy on north america when the GeForce video cards first came out. Worked for Dell in their wireless networking group (when wireless first came out), and Toshiba in Istanbul. So I am pretty good with all this info I have shared here. But to be honest, I'm standing on the shoulders of lots of research done by others. I am just bringing all those threads together for you guys. This machine will SCREAM doin video, One 1TB drive for source video, firewire and esata for rest, Second 1TB drive to dump to, and msata for OS, software, and cache memory, and oerclocked PU to aid if software supports. If you can edit video on a laptop, everything other than gaming is a cakewalk. As for gaming, I'm still thrilled playin mechwarrior online in 3d with flight joystick and throttle. While gaming, try to stay to the msata drive, just to help keep heat down, when you put on the new thermal paste, do the cpu too, this will help so much to reducing the heat problems others bitch about (but you won't) This laptop is a sweet deal! (I don't work for Dell now, I haven't worked for them for ten years, so I'm just a power user sharing info). Regards, Liber